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Life goes on.
How many times had she heard some diplomatically paraphrased riff on that in the past year from many people who claimed to care about her?
“You’re at a crossroads,” Leigh said. “You have a choice to make. You get back to work and you write a book—soon—or you break your contract and take a giant step backward in your career and hope,hope, a publisher, and readers, will give you another chancewhen you’re ready.”
Leigh saidwhen you’re readylike Quinn actually had chosen this, chosen to gut her life.
“I know what’s at stake, but it doesn’t come out of thin air.” She pressed her hand against her chest. “It’s empty.I’mempty. I’m sorry to let you down.”
She got up to leave, but Leigh grabbed her arm before she could dart into the flow of strangers and disappear.
“Don’t run off—I’m trying to help. I know you can’t think about the future right now, but as your agent, and as your friend, that’s where I have to focusforyou.”
Leigh lightened her hold.
“You’re right. I can’t think about the future right now.” This time she was faster, and Leigh’s hand missed her arm as she bolted.
* * *
She walkeduntil it was dark and the tears cleared. That was an underappreciated charm of Manhattan, that you could cry while you walked down the street and not feel terribly self-conscious because no one seemed to notice.
Or, if they did, they knew to leave you alone.
In a coffee shop, she wiped crumbs from a small round table with the edge of the rumpled alternative weekly someone had left behind. She pulled out a chair, sat, and checked her phone.
Nothing from Jonathan. It was almost nine, an hour later than he expected to be back.
He’s delayed. Give him some time.
She wished she could text him and have him appear, blindfold her, bind her, take control, use his body to free her.
She opened the paper and read the headlines, mindlessly turning from page to page.
The man at the next table cleared his throat, and she glanced in his direction. He was glaring at her foot, and she stilled the jittery tapping, the heel of her pump against the chair leg like a nervous baby bird’s flapping wings.
She didn’t want to go home. She needed Jonathan tonight, needed to have him inside her, his marks on her. Needed to take what he would give her. It had already been a week. A long week. She would go insane if she had to wait another day.
She turned the paper over to leaf through it from the beginning.
Check the phone again. Maybe you didn’t hear it.
Still nothing. She set the phone back on the table alongside the open paper. As she aimlessly browsed the ads, one caught her eye.
Octavia’s
Safe. Discreet. Welcoming.
She had heard of Octavia, the dominatrix who ran an upscale BDSM club; one of the city’s highbrow culture magazines ran a profile of her a few years back.
Which magazine escaped her, but she did recall being surprised by the article, by how down to earth Octavia and the club—the dungeon—had sounded, how . . . approachable.
If you were curious about the dungeon scene and wanted to check one out.
Not that she had any basis for comparison. Her sex life with Harris had been satisfying but definitely vanilla, except for a little playful spanking now and then.
She could still remember the fleeting thought she had when she had read that profile: If she and Harris were ever going to experiment, Octavia’s seemed like a place they would be comfortable getting started.
The phone sat quiet as a mouse on the table in front of her, but she turned it over and checked again, anyway.
